Marxism, Communism, and Women

A concise review of the role that feminism and women activists played in the development of Marxist institutions; the pattern of treatment of women that can be observed in existing communisms.

Author: Daniel Little

Professor of philosophy

University of Michigan-Dearborn

Marx’s writings are most closely associated with the
economic and social domination associated with class, with little attention to
the inequalities associated with gender. Marx had little to say directly about
the system of gender domination prevalent in his own time, and he was not
publicly associated with the contemporary movement for the emancipation of
women—contrast his silence with the writings of John Stuart Mill, for
example
(Mill 1970 [1869])
.Nonetheless, the foundations of Marx’s critique of bourgeois
society provide a foundation for a socialist feminism, and these themes had
great influence on communist political programmes and societies in the
twentieth century.

Marx and Engels offered scathing polemical criticisms of the
bourgeois family and the exploitation of women in the Communist Manifesto: “[The bourgeois] has not even a suspicion that the
real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments
of production” (
(Marx and Engels 1998
[1848])
: sect. 1).However, the critique
displays little insight into the ways that gender relations and the social
institutions of the family affect the life situations of women, and it fails to
identify the structural ways in which women were denied access to political
positions, economic opportunity, or basic components of health assurance.
Frederick Engels devoted more extensive attention to issues surrounding sex,
gender, and the family in his anthropological book, The Origins of the
Family, Private Property and the State
(Engels 1977 [1884])
.Based largely on the work of the early ethnographer Lewis
Henry Morgan
(Morgan 2000 [1877])
, Engels argues that there is
great historical variety in the sexual and reproductive practices of primates
and human groups.And he offers a
historical hypothesis for the emergence of the paired-couple family: the
emergence of private property and slavery.Neither Marx nor Engels offered a coherent statement of
socialist feminism, and neither offered specific commentary or criticism of the
political, social, and economic disadvantages experienced by women in
nineteenth-century Europe.

However, the fundamental themes of social criticism that
Marx puts forward—alienation, domination, inequality, and exploitation,
and a critique of the social relations that give rise to these
conditions—have clear implications for a theory of gender equality and
emancipation.First, Marx’s theory
of alienation is premised on assumptions about the nature of the human being,
involving the ideas of freedom, self-expression, creativity, and sociality
(Marx 1964 [1844])
.The situations of everyday life in which patriarchy and
sexism obtain—the situations in which existing social relations of power,
authority, and dominance are assigned on the basis of gender and sex, including
marriage, the family, and the workplace—create a situation of alienation
and domination for women.Second,
Marx’s theory of exploitation (expressed primarily in Capital
(Marx 1977 [1867])
) extends very naturally to
the social relations of patriarchy.Patriarchy and the bourgeois family system embody exploitation of women,
within the household and within the workplace. Finally, Marx’s strong moral
commitment to the overriding importance of social equality is directly relevant
to a socialist feminist critique of contemporary society. The unequal status
and treatment of women is an affront to the value of human equality.Thus Marx’s principles lay the ground
for a formulation of a socialist feminism.

Socialist and communist theorists of the decades between the
death of Marx and the First World War gave specific prominence to issues of
women’s equality.Lenin gave
attention to the problem of sexual inequality in bourgeois society in his
journalism and in a widely read interview with the German feminist Clara Zetkin
(Zetkin 1920)
.Other leading communist thinkers of the decades between 1880
and 1920 also placed issues of female emancipation and women’s equality at the
center of the socialist agenda (for example, Rosa Luxembourg, Nikolai Bukharin,
Clara Zetkin, Leon Trotsky, and Alexandra Kollentai).These developments had important consequences for the policy
priorities of communist governments once they seized power in Russia, China,
and Cuba.

The communisms of the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba placed
sexual equality at the top of the agenda for social transformation.Bolshevik political rhetoric emphasized
the equality of women as a central communist goal before and during the
revolution.In the 1920s the
government of the USSR undertook to establish a legal framework guaranteeing
legal equality for women, including full citizenship, equal pay, and the right
of divorce. A particularly important figure in Soviet efforts to create sexual
equality in the new communist society was Alexandra Kollentai, author of The
Social Bases of the Woman Question (1908).A crucial legal document
with the goal of establishing gender equality was the Code on Marriage, the
Family, and Guardianship (1918). The USSR demonstrated a higher level of
equality in employment and education opportunities for women than most European
countries during the period
(Jancar-Webster 1978)
.

The Chinese Communist Party likewise placed the emancipation
of women as one of its leading revolutionary goals, and CCP commanders made
specific efforts to mobilize women in the base areas in the 1930s and 1940s
(Chen 1986)
.Pro-feminist themes found resonance among Chinese women
because there was a tradition of feminist thought in Chinese politics extending
back to the May Fourth Movement. A central target of Chinese efforts for
establishing women’s equality was the traditional family and marriage
system.Arranged marriage,
domination by the mother-in-law, and subordination of the wife to the authority
of the husband were long-established features of Chinese society, and Chinese
communists were determined to end these practices (
(Hinton 1966)
: 157-160, 396-98).After the seizure of power in 1949 the
Communist state undertook a series of fundamental legal reforms to establish
the equality of women, including the areas of family and marriage (Marriage Law
of the People’s Republic of China; 1950), literacy and female education,
electoral rights (Electoral Law of the PRC; 1952), equality of treatment during
the period of land reform, and guarantee of the right to labor outside the
household. There was also a specific and long-term effort within the CCP to
develop and advance women into positions of leadership within the party, both
before and after the revolution.It is generally agreed that the status of women in China has improved
markedly since 1949, in terms of education, political participation, marital freedom,
and economic independence
(Tao, Zheng, and Mow
2004)
.

The Cuban revolution likewise brought systemic change for
the situation of Cuban women, and Cuba became a model for the developing world
in its success in ending the oppression of women.More fully even than the USSR or the PRC, Cuba succeeded
both in incorporating legal equality for women into its constitution and
fundamental legal system, and in changing the actual outcomes for the broad
population of Cuban women in virtually all segments of society.The percentages of female legislators,
lawyers, doctors, scientists, and managers are among the highest in any country.Women represent a majority of Cubans in
higher education—often in a large majority.Female health indicators likewise show an internationally
distinctive high level of attainment, with high female life expectancy and low
infant mortality. Nicola Murray provides a detailed accounting of the role and
status of women in post-revolution Cuba
(Murray 1979a, 1979b)
.

Socialist and communist ideas thus had a large effect on
progress towards greater gender equality in the twentieth century.For a mix of reasons, both ideological
and political, women leaders and the issue of the equal treatment of women have
had substantial influence on policies and outcomes in the Soviet Union, Eastern
Europe, China, and Cuba.This
progress has occurred in multiple spheres: in the area of legal and
constitutional declarations of equality of treatment; in the transformation of
some of the basic institutions governing family, marriage, and childrearing;
and in the successful provisioning of basic social goods (education,
healthcare, access to economic opportunities) in a way that comes closer to
establishing equality of outcomes for men and women.

See also: socialist feminism

References

Chen,
Yung-fa. 1986. Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and
Central China, 1937-1945. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Engels,
Friedrich. 1977 [1884]. The origin of the family, private property and the
state : in the light of the researches of Lewis H. Morgan. Edited by E. B. Leacock. London: Lawrence &
Wishart.

Hinton, William.
1966. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Vintage Books.